Sunlight is a great source of energy, but it rarely gets hot enough to fry an egg, let alone melt steel. Heliogen aims to change that with its high-tech concentrated solar technique, and has raised more than a hundred million dollars to test its 1,000-degree solar furnace at a few participating mines and refineries.<\/p>\n
We covered Heliogen when it made its debut in 2019<\/a>, and the details in that article still get at the core of the company\u2019s tech. Computer vision techniques are used to carefully control a large set of mirrors, which reflect and concentrate the sun\u2019s light to the extent that it can reach in excess of 1,000 degrees Celsius, almost twice what previous solar concentrators could do. \u201cIt\u2019s like a death ray,\u201d founder Bill Gross explained then.<\/p>\n That lets the system replace fossil fuels and other legacy systems in many applications where such temperatures are required, for example mining and smelting operations. By using a Heliogen concentrator, they could run on sunlight during much of the day and only rely on other sources at night, potentially halving their fuel expenditure and consequently both saving money and stepping toward a greener future.<\/p>\n\n